Aston Has Big Plans for Vantage and Rapide

The purveyor of Britain's finest GTs has some tricks of its sleeve, including a Vantage Carbon edition, a new V12 Vantage, an updated Rapide and a Vanquish Volante.

Brand identity in car design is a tricky thing. Automakers want their cars to be instantly recognizable as belonging to the brand, but if they go overboard, all their products can look the same. Aston Martin tends to err on the latter. If you saw one on the street, you'd know you were looking at an Aston, but it'd likely take you at least a second glance to determine which model. But the British automaker does offer several, and following the debut of the new Vanquish, a couple of them have updates in store.

First up is the V12 Vantage, which is tipped to get a new Carbon Black Edition before a more thorough facelift is implemented. Previous Carbon editions included carbon-fiber trim inside and out, an elaborate hand-finished black paint job and a $20,000 premium over the base model. Expect the new V12 Vantage Carbon Black Edition to follow down the same path. Like the DBS Ultimate, the V12 Vantage Carbon will likely be the send-off version before a new model comes along. Just what the next Vantage will encompass remains to be seen, but sometime around December or January we're also expecting the new Rapide to debut.

Although the prototypes depicted in recent spy shots don't appear to have changed much over the current version, Car and Driver reports that they're actually wearing dummy body panels disguising a new fascia with a gaping grille to ape the V12 Zagato. Expect a Vanquish Volante convertible model to appear next year as well, rounding out a lineup that may look mostly the same, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.